OTC, Drury sign A+ program agreement

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College Director of Communications

Steve Koehler

High school students throughout southwest Missouri now have an extra incentive to use the Missouri A+ program after an agreement was recently signed between Ozarks Technical Community College and Drury University.

OTC A+ students who meet certain academic criteria will be able to dual enroll at both the College and Drury and then transfer seamlessly to the four-year university after attaining their associate of arts degree at OTC.

They also could qualify for a $5,000 scholarship that will be available only to A+ students.

Qualifying students that began at OTC in the fall of 2009, as freshmen, are eligible for the program.

All Springfield schools along with a long list of local school districts are designated A+ schools including Nixa, Ozark, Republic, Lebanon, Branson, Bolivar and Waynesville can participate in the new program.

“This partnership provides an excellent opportunity for our A+ students to continue their education at Drury. Those students who benefit from the A+ program in their first two years will now be eligible for scholarships that were not previously available, said Dr. Hal Higdon, president of OTC.

“We see students 13,000 strong come to OTC this fall and they are bright, committed, well-educated students that will do well at OTC. They'll do well at Drury, and they'll come back into this community and they'll make this a better place to live for all of us.”

Drury President Todd Parnell added, “We want to make it as easy as possible for students to get a quality first-class, four-year education and we're working together to try and provide that.”

To be qualified for early admission at Drury, the A+ students must be admissible to Drury, maintain at least a 3.25 grade point average each semester at OTC and graduate from OTC with an associate’s degree.

The A+ Program, more than 15 years old, is a one-of-a-kind program that has opened the doors of Missouri’s community colleges to thousands of eligible high-school students.

It provides tuition to any Missouri public community college or career/technical school to high school students that meet the following requirements:

• Graduate from high school with an overall GPA of 2.5 or higher on a 4-point scale.

• Have an overall attendance rate of at least 95 percent for grades 9-12.